Mumbai: Film director and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah talked about his film ‘The Kerala Story’, in which actress Adah Sharma is playing the role of Fathima Ba, a Hindu Malayali nurse, who is among the 32,000 women who went missing from Kerala and were then recruited to the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) after being forced to convert to Islam.
As the story is based on true events, Vipul said that it involved a lot of research and it is an attempt to bring out the truth in front of everyone.
He said: “The film is an amalgamation of years of research and true stories which have never been dared to be told before, it will uncover many hidden truths that have been hidden for long. It will uncover the dangerous threat radicalisation poses to the women of our nation and will create awareness about this conspiracy being hatched against India.”
Directed by Sudipto Sen, it is a story of four women and how from being regular college students in Kerala, they became part of a terror organisations.
“The film aims to become the voice of tens of thousands of women across the globe who have been indoctrinated and exploited for terrorism and other crimes,” added Vipul.
Apart from Adah, the film also features Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani and Siddhi Idnani.
Jammu: Asserting that the Narendra Modi-led government does not interfere in the affairs of the CBI, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday said it was during the UPA regime the Supreme Court had pointed out that the CBI was a “parrot in a cage”.
Singh was replying to a question seeking his reaction about the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) summoning former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik in connection with an alleged insurance scam.
Singh told reporters after a BJP programme, “The CBI is an autonomous institution. Let it act on its investigation. Nobody can interfere with it.”
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government does not interfere in the CBI’s affairs, he added.
Asked for his response on Congress leader KC Venugopal’s tweet about central agencies being the BJP’s ”lapdog”, Singh said, ”He is still carrying the mentality that used to be there during the Congress’ time.”
The Union minister also said that during the UPA regime, the Supreme Court said the CBI was a parrot in a cage.
“Post 2014, the situation has changed. In Modi ji’s government, interference in the function of the CBI does not happen. They are given full independence,” Singh said.
The new actions could become especially significant as Biden’s climate agenda pushes the implementation of a host of clean-energy projects that raise local pollution concerns, including mineral mines, battery factories and carbon dioxide pipelines.
The executive order will be released a day before Earth Day in front of leaders from predominantly low-income and minority communities. In 2020, these activists helped shape his climate, environmental and social justice agenda while driving enthusiasm for his initial White House bid.
“Those are the groups that came out for this administration and those are the communities that I think the administration will look to again to form a coalition of communities that he will rely on in the next cycle,” Ana Baptista, an adviser to community environmental groups who was invited to the White House event, said in an interview. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. This is his base.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that the order “is a continuation of what [Biden has] promised the American people.”
“He’s going to sign a new executive order making environmental justice the mission of every federal agency,” she said. “When you think about that being the DNA of the administration, I think that’s an important piece here.”
Biden’s new order will offer direction to federal agencies on how to work with communities early in projects’ development. It will also tell them to improve their collection and use of data on the “cumulative impacts” of an area’s environmental and health problems when weighing decisions on infrastructure such as pipelines, waste incinerators, chemical processing facilities and highways.
Under current procedures, regulators typically assess pollution from new facilities or projects on a plant-by-plant basis rather than in conjunction with existing emissions from other sources. This method underestimates the health risks, community advocates say.
By instructing agencies to research and incorporate new data on those cumulative impacts and involving communities early in the process, Biden marries two of the “four historic crises” he identified on the campaign trail in 2020: climate change and racial inequality. Most people who face outsized health and climate vulnerabilities from concentrated pollution sources are people of color and low-income households.
The order comes as the Biden administration attempts to strike a contrast with House Republicans. They are pushing provisions that would put deadlines on environmental reviews for energy infrastructure projects, expand oil and gas drilling and exports, and slash chunks of clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ massive climate legislation.
The White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in recent days have sniped at each other over negotiations on lifting United States borrowing limits, a standoff that could have major implications for the U.S. and global economy. McCarthy on Wednesday proposed passing his caucus’ energy bill, H.R. 1 (118), in exchange for a one-year debt ceiling increase, as Democrats accused Republicans of turning what had once been a fairly routine procedural vote into hostage-taking.
“Speaker McCarthy and his extreme caucus’ proposals, including H.R. 1, would be a climate and health disaster that President Biden won’t allow on his watch,” a White House official said in a statement.
Baptista, who is also an associate professor at The New School in New York City, said Biden’s order could have major implications for areas already brimming with heavy industry where residents are suffering health risks.
But she said its effectiveness will depend on political will. It will be up to agencies, for example, to craft methodologies that help them decide whether to deny permits because of pervasive health and environmental disparities.
Raul Garcia, vice president of policy and legislation with the environmental group Earthjustice, said Biden’s executive order “gives us high hopes” that the federal government would curb new pollution in communities already bearing a disproportionate environmental burden. Weighing various sources of pollution in aggregate rather than individually should raise the bar for pollution in a particular place because “people on the ground don’t experience pollution pollutant by pollutant,” he said.
Still, implementing the order across the federal government will require hard work, Garcia said.
Recent decisions by the administration would exacerbate environmental and health inequalities for some communities, he said, such as the Interior Department’s approval last month of the Willow oil project in Alaska. He also criticized the White House embrace last year of a bill from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that would have changed environmental review laws to speed permitting for energy projects.
“On its merits, it’s something the country has needed for a very long time,” Garcia said of the new executive order. “At the same time, it does come on the heels of very dangerous decisions coming out of the Biden administration. We have to analyze the whole of the thread of decisions as we’re reacting to this.”
Biden has nonetheless made eliminating environmental inequalities central to his climate and energy agenda, including the IRA. He has pledged that at least 40 percent of clean energy and climate benefits will flow to environmentally overburdened communities to correct historical inequalities and underinvestment. Republicans have proposed cutting one of his administration’s signature programs for driving clean energy investment to poorer communities — a $27 billion green bank created by the IRA.
While his administration set lofty goals, the White House has taken criticism from many advocates in the environmental justice movement, which seeks to address systemic imbalances in the way pollution and other harms burden low-income communities and people of color. They have accused the Biden administration of failing to properly staff its environmental justice initiatives, and have sought more transparent accounting of how the administration is reaching its 40-percent goal.
The activists have also slammed the subsidies for carbon capture and hydrogen power found in the IRA and in 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure law.
Friday’s actions, however, address a key concern for the movement, as asking agencies to consider the totality of already-present pollution and health risks has been a pillar of its agenda since its infancy.
That push took on increased attention in recent years in Congress. Getting the federal government to more seriously assess the cumulative impacts of pollution was also the primary goal for the late Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), an early Biden supporter whose input shaped the then-candidate’s platform on environmental justice. McEachin sponsored the Environmental Justice For All Act, H.R. 1705 (118) — which now bears his name — along with House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.). That bill would require agencies to consider cumulative impacts.
The moves announced Friday also answer other concerns activists wanted the White House to address.
The order creates a White House Office of Environmental Justice to coordinate and implement efforts across the federal government, although a White House fact sheet did not specify how many people will work for it. The office will be housed inside the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The Biden administration will also unveil a scorecard to evaluate agencies’ environmental justice progress and detailed new programs at the Commerce Department, National Science Foundation and NASA that qualify for Biden’s 40-percent pledge.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) managing director VC Sajjanar on Friday said that the company is conducting training for bus drivers and conductors in order to increase the Occupancy Ratio (OR) to 75 percent.
Sajjanar participated virtually in TSRTC April Challenge for Training (TACT) from the Bus Bhavan in Hyderabad. TACT, which was launched on Friday, is being conducted across various bus depots in Telangana.
Speaking to the conductors, the TSRTC MD directed them to don a welcoming attitude towards passengers. “Bus conductors and drivers are the brand ambassadors for TSRTC. On-field duties have to be performed carefully. Even small mistakes may lead to damage to TSRTC’s credibility,” he added.
“Our work should be passenger-centric. We should never misbehave with the passengers. We should greet the passengers who enter the bus with a ‘Namasthe’ and a smile. Always remember that the passengers have many alternative ways to travel,” said Sajjanar.
The MD informed us that many changes have been made in the company in the last one and a half years. “There is a lot more to be done and this is why we trying to provide skill development to our staff in the form of TACT. The people of Telangana are encouraging public transportation. The present Occupancy Ratio is about 69 percent and the company hopes to increase it to 75 percent,” he said.
He informed that about 6000 drivers and conductors have been provided training in Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Secunderabad regions. TSRTC aims to complete the training for all their staff in the next three months.
TSRTC chief operating officer (COO) Dr Ravinder, executive director of Operations Munishekhar, CPM Krishnakant, OSD Ugander, CTM Vijay Kumar and others participated in the training on Friday.
BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is heading to China to represent Berlin, but she’ll likely have more explaining to do about Paris in the wake of French President Emmanuel Macron’s explosive comments on Taiwan.
As Baerbock embarked on her two-day visit Wednesday evening, officials in Berlin were eager to stress that Germany and the EU care about Taiwan and stability in the region, arguing it’s mainly China that must contribute to de-escalation by refraining from aggressive military maneuvers close to the island nation.
Baerbock’s trip comes amid international backlash against Macron’s comments in an interview with POLITICO, arguing Europe should avoid becoming America’s follower, including on the matter of Taiwan’s security. Although German government spokespeople refused to comment directly on the French president’s remarks, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry specifically called out Beijing when expressing “great concern” over the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
“We expect all parties in the region to contribute to peace. That applies equally to the People’s Republic of China,” the spokesperson said, adding: “And it seems to us that actions such as military threatening gestures are counter to that goal and, in fact, increase the risk of unintended military clashes.”
Nils Schmid, the foreign policy spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), said he expects Baerbock to “set the record straight” during her trip to China, which will involve meetings with Beijing’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Vice President Han Zheng and top diplomat Wang Yi.
“We clearly defined in the [government] coalition agreement that we need a changed China policy because China has changed. The chancellor made that clear during his visit. Above all, Scholz also issued clear warnings about Taiwan during his visit [last year],” Schmid wrote in a tweet. “I assume that Foreign Minister Baerbock will repeat exactly that and thus set the record straight and make a clarification after Macron’s botched visit.”
Berlin traditionally has been much more in sync with the U.S. on foreign and security policy than France has, which is why many politicians and officials in the German capital reacted with horror to Macron’s comments. The French president said Europe should not take its “cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” suggesting the EU stood between the two sides, rather than being aligned with its longtime democratic partners in Washington.
Macron gave the impression to some in the U.S. that Europeans see Beijing and Washington as “equidistant” from Brussels in terms of values and as allies, said SPD foreign policy lawmaker Metin Hakverdi, who is currently on a parliamentary visit to the U.S.
“That was foolish,” Hakverdi told POLITICO, adding that “Macron potentially damaged the peaceful status quo around Taiwan” by giving “the public impression that Europe has no particular interest in the conflict over Taiwan.
“The issue of Taiwan is not an internal matter for the People’s Republic of China. Anything else would virtually invite Beijing to attack Taiwan,” Hakverdi added. “I am confident that our foreign minister will make that clear during her trip to Asia — both to Beijing and to our Asian partners.”
Katja Leikert from the main German opposition party, the center-right CDU, criticized Macron’s comments as “extremely short-sighted,” and added: “Should China decide to strike Taiwan militarily, either by invading it or by starting a maritime blockade, this would have significant political and economic repercussions for us. We cannot just wish that away.
“What we actually need to do right now is strengthen our defense against aggressive measures from Beijing,” Leikert said.
For Berlin, Macron’s comments also come at a particularly bad moment for transatlantic ties. The German government is keen to mend cracks in its relationship with Washington that have emerged over the controversial benefits for U.S. businesses under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Europe hopes to reach an agreement so that its own companies may also be eligible for these subsidies.
Macron’s comments “will not help in renegotiations on the Inflation Reduction Act, nor will they help Joe Biden in the election campaign against populist Republican candidates,” said the SPD’s Hakverdi.
The German foreign ministry spokesperson was quick to stress that both France and Germany were involved in shaping a joint EU-China policy | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
The German foreign ministry spokesperson was quick to stress that both France and Germany were involved in shaping a joint EU-China policy, which was also done in cooperation “with our transatlantic partner.”
During her trip to China, Baerbock plans to raise the situation in the Taiwan Strait; Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; the human rights situation in China; as well as the fight against climate crisis, the spokesperson said.
Baerbock’s foreign ministry is also currently drafting Germany’s first China strategy. A draft of this seen by POLITICO last year vowed to take a much harder line toward Beijing. Baerbock and her Green party are at the forefront of pushing such a tougher position, while Scholz has long preferred a softer approach.
Incidentally, however, the German government said Wednesday it is reassessing whether to potentially take a firmer stance and ban Chinese state company Cosco from going through with a highly controversial move to buy parts of a Hamburg port terminal.
Scholz had strongly pushed for the port deal ahead of his own trip to Beijing last year, but the future of the transaction is now in doubt after German security authorities classified the terminal as “critical infrastructure.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Pune: Chief of Army Staff General Manoj Pande has said transgressions remain the potential trigger for escalations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China and asserted India has adequate reserves and was prepared to deal with any contingency.
Speaking at an event here on Monday, he also said China wants to replace the United States as a global net security provider and cited Beijing’s involvement in brokering recent peace talks between arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran and putting forth a peace plan to end the 13-month-long Russia-Ukraine war.
The Army chief said China has accrued significant capacities for force mobilization, application, and sustenance of military operations and maintained the long-pending boundary issue can not be divorced from bilateral relations between the two Asian giants.
General Pande said Chinese attempts to carry out transgressions across the LAC in violations of past agreements/protocols remain a matter of concern for India, but the Army’s preparedness remains of a high order, comments coming in the backdrop of the border standoff in eastern Ladakh since May 2020.
He was speaking at the 2nd Strategic Dialogue on ‘Rise of China and its Implications for the World’, organized by the Savitribai Phule Pune University and the New Delhi-based Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.
“I think the most important aspect of our operational environment remains our legacy challenges of the unsettled and disputed borders. Pockets of dispute and contested claims to the territory continue to exist due to differing perceptions of the alignment of the Line of Actual Control. Transgressions remain the potential trigger for escalations,” the Chief of Army Staff cautioned.
Hence, Sino-Indian border management requires close monitoring as infirmities can lead to a wider conflict, General Pande said.
“As we all knew we have agreements/protocols — (signed in) 1993, 1996, 2005, and 2013 — in the military domain to maintain peace and tranquillity on the LAC. Of concerns remain the violations of these by China — with their attempt to carry out — transgressions across the LAC,” he said.
The decades-old boundary issue cannot be divorced from bilateral relations, General Pande asserted and went on to quote External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who had said, “for (India-China) ties to return to the positive trajectory and remain sustainable, they must be based on three mutual sensitivity respect, and interest.”
New Delhi has repeatedly maintained that its ties with Beijing cannot be normal unless there is peace in the border areas.
General Pande said engagement mechanisms exist at political, diplomatic, and military levels between the two countries which are optimally utilized to ensure stability along the LAC.
Talks are continuing under these establishment mechanisms, he said.
“China has accrued significant capacities for force mobilization, application, and sustenance of military operations. It has built infrastructure of military significance — be it roads, airfields, helipads, and so on,” the Army chief added.
He said the Indian Army’s strategic orientation and long-term capability development have been with a focus on the northern border.
“We have carried out the required rebalancing of the forces to affect the desired response on the northern border,” General Pande said.
The Army chief insisted India has adequate reserves and was prepared to deal with any contingency.
“Our preparedness remains of a high order and troops continued to deal with PLA (China’s People’s Liberation Army) in a firm, resolute, and measured manner while ensuring the sanctity of our claims,” he asserted.
General Pande stated that the Indian Army has ramped up its efforts to fructify the operationally critical logistical requirements, especially roads in the forward areas. The Indian Army is working in synergy with all agencies in the forward areas to upgrade infrastructure, he added.
General Pande said after becoming an economic powerhouse, China is looking to enhance its global role.
“Brokering peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and putting forth the Chinese 12-point peace plan for ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, are reflective of a Chinese urgency to replace the US as a global net security provider,” he said.
Talking about China’s rapid economic rise, General Pande noted that the Communist giant’s growth in the economic domain has been unprecedented.
“Within a few decades of initiating widespread reforms, it transitioned from a largely agrarian economy into a world leader in manufacturing and services sectors. Due to its industrial prowess, it also earned a name for itself as the ‘world’s factory’. Following this success, many developing countries and their leaders have looked to emulate China,” he said.
The Army chief pointed out that China today stands as the world’s largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity terms (based on buying power) and its economic expansion was multifaceted.
“On the one hand, it is building an ‘international network of coercion through predatory economics’, while on the other it claims to pull more than 100 million of its own people out of poverty.
“Its efforts to expand the sphere of influence through economic manoeuvring, weaponization of resource supply chains, financing large infrastructure projects with scant regard for environmental and safety standards and straddling recipient countries with unsustainable debt, are there for the world to see,” he said.
The Chief of Army Staff said issues of concern continue to exist in cases of theft of Intellectual Property Rights, stealing trade secrets and technology from foreign companies as also unfair trade practices.
KULGAM, MARCH 08: Continuing with its endeavour to provide effective and accessible grievance redressal platforms at the doorsteps of people, the District Administration Kulgam today organized Mega Block Diwas in various blocks of the district including at Kund, Kulgam and D.H Pora.
Officers remained available at the venues and jotted down public demands, listened to their issues and grievances for early redressal.
The Deputy Commissioner (DC) Kulgam, Dr.Bilal Mohi-Ud-Din Bhat presided over a grievances redressal camp at Kulgam, where he listened to the issues and grievances of the people for early redressal.
Public delegations from Brazloo, Koriel, Bohgund, Frisal, Pombay and other areas participated in this grievances redressal camp and apprised the DC about their issues and grievances besides projected various developmental requirements in their areas.
All the grievances and issues of people were listened to by the DC patiently and some of the grievances of immediate nature were redressed on the spot.
Officers and heads of departments also responded to the queries of the people pertaining to their departments.
While addressing the participants, the DC said that Block Diwas aims to redress public grievances of immediate nature at an earliest and to provide the services to the masses at their door steps, besides ensuring accountability.
Meanwhile Public outreach camps were also held at Block Kund and D. H. Pora, where concerned officers listened to public issues and concerns.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will meet this Monday with the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to fulfill the final stretch of an agreement on the application of the Irish Protocol, which has blocked relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union after Brexit and has caused the collapse of home rule in Northern Ireland.
Von der Leyemn will arrive at the Prime Minister’s residence, at 10 Downing Street, “at lunchtime” and both will leave for Windsor Castle to sign it and appear at a press conference. The agreement is likely to be signed in the presence of King Carlos III. Later, Sunak will present a statement in the House of Commons, which will be followed by a debate.
The Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Withdrawal Agreement of the United Kingdom from the Union signed by the two parties on January 24, 2020. It contains the legislative procedures that prevent the creation of a border between the two Irelands, making it possible that Northern Ireland remains in the common market at the same time as it remains in the British internal market.
The document lists the regulations and directives that must apply to goods that are produced in Northern Ireland or arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, so that non-compliant goods do not enter the Republic of Ireland. community rules. It also establishes the supremacy of the Court of Justice of the EU to resolve disputes.
The then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, celebrated the signing of the Protocol and assured, despite the contrary opinion of other politicians and experts, that it would not lead to the establishment of customs controls. The reality is that border requirements have become a source of complaints about the cost of the bureaucratic burden, leading to the temporary non-application of some controls.
For the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which was the majority in the province until the May 2022 elections, the Protocol weakens its position in the United Kingdom. And the obligation to apply without voice or vote the modifications of regulations and directives decided by the EU, and the role of the community court, are in his opinion a loss of sovereignty and a democratic deficit.
Seal
The DUP boycotts the autonomous institutions created in 1998 as an essential element of the peace agreement to protest the maintenance of the Protocol. The radical ‘brexiters’ deputies and Johnson himself demand that Sunak complete the processing of a bill from the former prime minister, which would give the British government the power to unilaterally annul the agreed obligations.
This context of British politics calls into question the viability of Sunak’s commitment, which seems determined to sign an agreement with Von der Leyen that does not modify the Protocol – Brussels’ persistent position – but would soften aspects of its application. The benefit would be the opening of negotiations on British participation in the Horizon scientific collaboration program, access to the financial market and other blocked issues.
The conservative leader, who took over as head of government in October – the third prime minister in four months – undertakes the biggest challenge of his tenure. Regarded as a meticulous and hard-working politician, he is portrayed by the Labor opposition as weak in the face of a scrambled parliamentary caucus and a party angry at him for his part in ousting Johnson.
He is now criticized for not having informed the unionists about the details of the negotiation until two weeks ago and for keeping secret the progress of his pacts with Brussels. He seems determined to “get Brexit done” and to challenge his critics. The polls say that Sunak, before sealing this inherited mess with his authority, is twenty points behind Labor in voting intentions.
PARIS — French parents had better think twice before posting too many pictures of their offspring on social media.
On Tuesday, members of the National Assembly’s law committee unanimously green-lit draft legislation to protect children’s rights to their own images.
“The message to parents is that their job is to protect their children’s privacy,” Bruno Studer, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron’s party who put the bill forward, said in an interview. “On average, children have 1,300 photos of themselves circulating on social media platforms before the age of 13, before they are even allowed to have an account,” he added.
The French president and his wife Brigitte have made child protection online a political priority. Lawmakers are also working on age-verification requirements for social media and rules to limit kids’ screen time.
Studer, who was first elected in 2017, has made a career out of child safety online. In the past few years, he authored two groundbreaking pieces of legislation: one requiring smartphone and tablet manufacturers to give parents the option to control their children’s internet access, and another introducing legal protections for YouTube child stars.
So-called sharenting (combining “sharing” and “parenting,” referring to posting sensitive pictures of one’s kids online) constitutes one of the main risks to children’s privacy, according to the bill’s explanatory statement. Half of the pictures shared by child sexual abusers were initially posted by parents on social media, according to reports by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, mentioned in the text.
The legislation adopted on Tuesday includes protecting their children’s privacy among parents’ legal duties. Both parents would be jointly responsible for their offspring’s image rights and “shall involve the child … according to his or her age and degree of maturity.”
In case of disagreement between parents, a judge can ban one of them from posting or sharing a child’s pictures without authorization from the other. And in the most extreme cases, parents can lose their parental authority over their kids’ image rights “if the dissemination of the child’s image by both parents seriously affects the child’s dignity or moral integrity.”
The bill still needs to go through a plenary session next week and the Senate before it would become law.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
At first glance, the Twitter user “Canaelan” looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl.
Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread “propaganda”.
Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel.
Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. One appears to have been sold to a client who wanted to discredit the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), a statutory watchdog.
On 18 October 2020, the ICO ruled that the government should reveal which companies were awarded multimillion-pound contracts to supply PPEafter being entered into a “VIP” lane for politically connected companies. “This is politically motivated, it’s clear!” Canaelan lamented on Twitter two days later.
‘Team Jorge’ unmasked: the secret disinformation team who distort reality – video
That comment was part of a chorus of disapproval generated by the bots, who seemed aghast. “Information Commissioner tries everything to destroy the government,” one said, while another described the ruling as a “desperate act”.
All of the “replies” under that and other tweets were united in their outrage at the ICO, which they described as “a waste of time” and “lame”. As the replies continued, they became more trenchant, making wild and false accusations against the ICO about bribes, corruption and links to the far right.
Others just seemed nonplussed by the ICO’s insistence on transparency over the government’s pandemic procurement. “This is so typical from the UK …” one bot opined, “focusing on the wrong things.”
It is not known who commissioned Team Jorge to unleash the bots on the ICO, or why. Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but said: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”
The ICO campaign appears to have been relatively short-lived compared with others around the world that reporters have been able to link to Team Jorge’s Aims software, which is much more than a bot-controlling programme.
Each avatar, according to a demonstration Hanan gave the undercover reporters, is given a multifaceted digital backstory.
Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.
Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence.
Using the Aims-linked avatars revealed by Team Jorge in presentations and videos, reporters at the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel were able to identify a much wider network of 2,000 Aims-linked bots on Facebook and Twitter.
Quick Guide
About this investigative series
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The Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay.The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”
The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.
Investigative journalism like this is vital for our democracy. Please consider supporting it today.
We then traced their activity across the internet, identifying their involvement in what appeared to be mostly commercial disputes in about 20 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Panama, Senegal, Mexico, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Ecuador.
The analysis revealed a vast array of bot activity, with Aims’ fake social media profiles getting involved in a dispute in California over nuclear power; a #MeToo controversy in Canada; a campaign in France involving a Qatari UN official; and an election in Senegal.
Tal Hanan. Photograph: .Source: Haaretz/The Marker/Radio France
Do you have information about Tal Hanan or ‘Team Jorge’? For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.
One of the Aims-backed campaigns targeted a Monaco-based superyacht company, accusing it of having direct links to several Russian oligarchs who were subject to sanctions.
We also identified real-world events that appeared to have been staged to provide ammunition that could be leveraged in social media campaigns. One case involved a fake protest staged outside a company headquarters on Regent Street, central London.
Three masked activists in baseball caps, sunglasses and masks filmed themselves waving placards. A similar leafletting campaign was staged near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, before being circulated on social media by Aims bots. It is not possible to know who the clients were in any of the campaigns, or even what their objective was.
However, what seems clear is that the avatars peddling propaganda are doing so with the help of stolen photographs of real people.
The photo of a beaming man on Canaelan’s Twitter bio, the Guardian has established, was taken from the real Twitter page of Tom Van Rooijen, 25, a freelance Dutch journalist living in the Netherlands.
Canaelan’s Twitter bio (left) was taken from the real Twitter page of Tom Van Rooijen, a journalist in the Netherlands. Photograph: Twitter
Informed about the identity theft by the Guardian, Van Rooijen said he felt “quite uncomfortable” seeing his face beside a tweet expressing views he disagreed with. “I give a lot of workshops to school classes about news, media, journalism and fake news. I teach children weekly that their identity can be stolen by a Twitter bot,” he said. “I never thought my own identity would be stolen by a bot.”
Van Rooijen is likely to be among tens of thousands of unsuspecting victims whose images have been harvested by Team Jorge.
Other techniques are also used to lend the avatars credibility and avoid the bot-detection systems created by tech platforms. Hanan said his bots were linked to SMS-verified phone numbers, and some even had credit cards. Aims also has different groups of avatars with various nationalities and languages, with evidence they have been pushing narratives in Russian, Spanish, French and Japanese.
Those involved in the ICO campaign had been made to seem British, retweeting news articles from the Guardian, BBC, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. They showed an interest in the royal family, Glastonbury and Liz Truss’s performance as foreign minister, and posted lighthearted jokes about British weather and food, as well as scenic photos from Wiltshire and Yorkshire.
Those backgrounds provided some credibility when, later, they suddenly began expressing views about the UK’s data watchdog.
Twitter declined to comment. Meta, the owner of Facebook, this week took down Aims-linked bots on its platform after reporters shared a sample of the fake accounts with the company. On Tuesday, a Meta spokesperson connected the Aims bots to others that were linked in 2019 to another, now-defunct Israeli firm which it banned from the platform.
“This latest activity is an attempt by some of the same individuals to come back and we removed them for violating our policies,” the spokesperson said. “The group’s latest activity appears to have centred around running fake petitions on the internet or seeding fabricated stories in mainstream media outlets.”
For all of their apparent sophistication, some Aims avatars betrayed giveaways. One of the Twitter bots involved in UK campaigns alongside Canaelan was “Alexander”, whose profile picture showed a young man with a sculpted beard in a white beanie hat. The background: orange tulips beside a chirpy slogan “Be happy”.
And his profile bio consisted of two short sentences that hinted at an interest in falsehoods – and how to make them convincing: “The difference between fiction and reality?’ Fiction has to make sense.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
